Do Narendra Modi and Arun Jaitly think that there is a certain amount of immaturity in the democratic set up which they conveniently address through their maneuverings? Has Modi a sleight of hand ready for any occasion and all the times? He made out March 21st tryst with SIT to turn it upon the head of SIT figuratively and literally. These gimmicks of Modi made 21st as the ides of March. What kind of Macbeth (or, Caesar) is he that he fears for life at the old secretariat housing SIT office in old Gandhinager while in his house in the new Gandhinager he feels safe? Perhaps he sees a menacing ghosts of Banquo in some of those who deposed before him: DGP K Chakravarthi, RB Sreekumar, additional DGPs Kuldip Sharma and Shivanand Jha, deputy inspector generals of police Rahul Sharma and Vivek Srivastava.

How Modi took the people for a ride is plainly discernible despite the chicanery and sophistry of his ‘ace’ lawyer mentor, Jaitley. The SIT had sent him notice on March 11 to join in the investigation which is based on Widow Zakiya Jafri’s petition that 69 people including her husband were killed because Modi had used state apparatus in favour of predetermined (conspired?) leniency to the Hindus who were incited to perform pogroms on the pretext of protest against Godhra incident. He had told the police and administrators to let the Hindus vent their anger despite the fact that the collector of Godhra had called the burning of the train an accident. The SIT had asked him through the notice to find a suitable date after 21st March and communicate it to them. They specified “after 21st ” which would be Sunday and their offices would be closed. In a Machiavellian move Modi deliberately ignored the notice and did not communicate his choice of date. This conspiratorial silence of eleven days was calculated to build suspense which they thought would end in a melodramatic way when the duo would make the crafted open letter to “my beloved countrymen” public.

The letter released on March 22nd would be the last ditch battle to brow beat the SIT using the familiar tactic of what Dr Samuel Johnson said three hundred years ago, “patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel.”

The letter turns around the “purveyors of untruth” and “purveyors of lies” and the “vested interest.”Modi views them unpatriotic and hostile to Gujarat. Whatever they have done and said according to the letter is “canard.”It is essential to deconstruct this web that Modi has woven and see it in the light of what RK Raghvan said that the questioning is a step forward in removing some mystery regarding the carnage. As a democratically elected chief executive of the state he was duty bound to protect the lives of all the citizens of the state. When Ahsan Jafri made his last call to Modi, the chief minister abused him “sale, tu abhi zinda hai!” The people standing close to Jafri heard what was spoken on the phone. If the SIT finds out the transcript by any miracle you can easily nail the lie. Given the kind of dispensation Gujarat has had under Modi that is impossible. If he blared out through loudspeakers abuses at Muslims and the SC or NHRC wanted a tape recorded cassette, the police and intelligence never obliged.

However, Modi’s ministers were in the police control rooms across the state. Phone call details are available. But even this record is fudged. There is no hope of retrieving such vital proofs as long as Modi and his party are in power. Haren Pandey, his finance minister, had dared to reveal what transpired in the house of the CM on February 27th 2002, and you know his end.

The police commissioner PC Pande had visited Ahsan Jafri at 10 in the morning of February 28th and offered safe exit to the former MP. Jafri did not accept it because more than sixty people had taken refuge under his roof and he was morally bound to protect them. After the last phone call to Modi, Jafri surrendered himself to the blood thirsty mob appealing them to spare the refugees in his house. They enacted their gory plan of cutting his hands, feet, torso, head, etc. They played cricket with his skull till the darkness settled on the house. Few of the marauders had the temerity to tell this to reporters!

Zakiya Jafri knew that the Government of Atal Bihari Vajpayee had shot down the motion in parliament of mourning the death of her husband. Vajpayee had not even bothered to heed what President KR Narayanan had written to him about the disturbing developments in Gujarat 2002. Zakiya was overwhelmed by widespread murder and mayhem but in 2006 she went to DGP to lodge a complaint against Modi and 62 others. He refused to register her FIR. On April 27, 2009 the Supreme Court asked SIT to probe her complaint.

During all this time Modi and now his buddy Amitacb Bachan had turned a deaf ear to the weeping and wailing of the orphans and widows of the pogroms. Modi closed down the refugee camps, pre-poned the elections and turned out the refugees on the road to fend for themselves while facing boycott everywhere in the state. Muslims arrested by police were booked under TADA and they are still languishing in jails while Hindus were set free because of the flimsy ground in the registration of crimes they had committed on their fellow countrymen. One of the most enduring mascot of shame of Gujarat and indeed India is Babu Bajangee (Babubhai Patel) and police officer KK Mysorewala. Modi had personally housed Bajrangee in the posh government guesthouse at Mount Abu so that he could abscond from the laws the Chief Minister had sworn to uphold when he took office and now he boasts of respecting.

Mysorewala is the notorious cop whose sentence denying shelter to Muslim women and children became title of reports by Human Rights organizations. He had told the hapless and the hounded that there was order from above that the police should not protect them that day. He has enjoyed state patronage and got promotions despite the charges leveled against him.

This is the tip of the iceberg of genocide in Gujarat 2002. After having Rip Van Winkle’s slumber of eight years, the Chief Minister and Amitabh Bachan have resorted to politicking. Modi and Bachan are using the material prosperity as the eyewash that would wipe out the stigma of the genocide while the men of sanity look at 2002 events as eyesore. Bachan thunders “I want to see who is going to stop me from glorifying them! (achievements of Gujaat)” Modi castigate the concerned citizens of conscience as “the Talibans of the public life.”

Rising above the hubbub is the woebegone face of Zakia, weeping and yet smiling. The rainbow of hope in her face. “The laws are not so blind that it will not provide me justice. Definitely, I will get justice.”